Page 25 of Just Me

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“Sunday night?”

“Yes.”

“Sunday night I do—I mean, I can—I was with someone. With a colleague.”

“A colleague?”

“We maintain casino software.”

Cami pricked up her ears. That sounded interesting.

“On Sunday, we had to do a few site visits because not everything can be fixed remotely. The machines, some of them have big issues between the mainframe and the cloud technology. A lot of them are still on-site servers. You have to go in; you can’t fix everything via the web. And Sunday night to Monday night is the time we do it as the casinos are the quietest.”

“So, where did you go?”

“I’ll give you a list. We had a whole stack of issues to sort out: glitches to fi and hardware to upgrade. We started at about ten a.m. on Sunday morning. And we worked through to about midday Monday. It’s always a long day when we do that, which is every two weeks.”

Cami watched Connor’s face. His mind was working in overdrive. She could see him comparing the time frames and assessing what had been said. And she thought, suddenly, that he was coming up against a discrepancy.

Guy’s version was colliding with the timing needed to commit this crime.

“You have proof?”

He nodded. “Yes. I do. We were in and out of all the casinos. We had timesheets. There were cameras. I was with my work partner—not the whole time, but we were in the same area. In the server’s area. And they don’t let us in without security.”

Now that he was talking about his job, Cami realized she was seeing a different side of him. Confident. Professional. Not like a man who would hire the two prostitutes that she guessed were still laying low in the bathroom, not wanting to walk out in full view of the FBI. He definitely had two different sides, but now it didn’t look like either were murderous.

“Give me the proof. If you give me the proof, and we confirm it, we’re out of here.” Connor’s voice was harsh.

Cami’s heart plummeted. This was it. The curveball she’d never expected. An alibi. He’d clearly been able to account for his time in a confirmable way when one of the murders happened.

“Sure. Sure. I’ll give you proof.”

It was weird, Cami thought. It was like there had been this tower of tension in the air that she could almost see looming, writhing, and practically glowing. And now, it had collapsed. The atmosphere in the room was totally different. It was as if all the intensity had dissipated, bleeding out into the corners and away.

Fumbling through his records, Guy compiled the proof and handed the printed sheets over, forwarding the information that was online and couldn’t be printed. Connor received it all with a serious face. He checked it thoroughly, but Cami knew that this would be confirmed. It wasn’t the kind of stuff that could be made up on the fly. Connor was just making sure.

And then, they left. Connor had a copy of all the paperwork, presumably so that he could add it to the case file and explain why this suspect had been ruled out.

They walked out into the night. Cami felt the cool spring breeze on her face. She heard the hum of the nighttime traffic. She smelled the rich aroma of food from the restaurant down the road, and the more subtle tinge of jasmine from the plants in the front yard.

She looked around as the front door swung shut, mostly to see if the prostitutes had been let out yet, which they hadn’t. They were still hiding away.

But she noticed something, that didn’t even register at first, but when it did, it sent a chill all the way down her spine.

She saw the camera above the door.

And she noticed it was facing down again. Pointing at the door.

No way could Guy have redirected it. But someone had.

Cami guessed it must have been done remotely. And it could have been hacked. Someone had been watching.

Someone, who wasn’t Guy had glimpsed them arrive and had turned that camera facing down again to watch them leave.


Tags: Blake Pierce Mystery